Launch of Quantum Mission; ₹6K crore for eight years

Over the eight-year mission period, the government aims to provide up to 1,000 qubits of quantum computing power and help build a 2,000 km quantum communication network in India. The investment will primarily go into building quantum computing power for research.

Union Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister Anurag Singh Thakur and Minister of State (MoS) for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh announced the details of the mission on Wednesday.

“India is one of the largest users and stakeholders of information technology (IT) today, and quantum technologies are essentially related to information processing and sharing. It can make information processing faster, more authentic, accurate and more secure, Singh said after the cabinet meeting.

The mission will work to create 20-50 qubits of computing power by FY26, up to 100 qubits by FY28, and eventually 1,000 qubits by FY31. In the first three years, the government will also give incentives to set up quantum communication networks up to 1,500 km using satellite services, Singh said at a press conference. The qubit is the basic building block of quantum computing, just as bits are the basic building blocks of classical computing.

To be sure, the final amount of 6,003.65 crores Rs 8,000 crore proposed for the five-year mission proposed in the Union Budget for FY21. Addressing this, Thakur said, “As technology is developing, understanding is also developing. What was not understood yesterday, is felt today. Even the applications on it are the same.” including investigative healthcare or data security. Other nations are still in the research stage, so we are not behind, but on par with global leaders, including the US, Canada, Austria, Finland, China and France Are included.”

Singh said the mission will launch four thematic hubs for quantum research in top national universities, including quantum computing, quantum communications, quantum sensing and meteorology, and quantum materials and devices.

Industry experts and stakeholders welcomed the approval of NQM despite the low amount offered.

Anil Prabhakar, principal investigator at the Center of Excellence on Quantum Information, Communication and Computing at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, said academics are “happy” with the announcement, though the targets are stringent.

“The Center has set reasonably strong targets over three-, five- and eight-year time frames, and one of the targets is a quantum communication network. As a result, some technology demonstrations will now be on the field within the aggressive timeframe, requiring theoretical applications.” To turn this into a reality, academics will need to do a lot of translational research,” Prabhakar said.

He said that academic research institutions would need to collaborate with startups and research labs to achieve these goals. Such initiatives will be critical to building the quantum hardware and communications networks for which the mission aims.

“Building these networks will be inherently important from a security perspective. Quantum technologies are already reaching Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 5 and 6 in global geographies, which are currently highly advanced security technologies for existing technology infrastructure. This makes it imperative for us to upgrade our networks as well, Prabhakar said.

The TRL is a number from one to nine that rates how advanced a technology or product is in terms of commercial deployment. While one reflects the early concept stages of research, nine reflects a product being ready for mass-market commercial use cases.

Prabhakar said the budget allocated under the NQM is sufficient to meet “moving goals” in terms of the amount of investment required for quantum research and the demand for quantum computing power that will increase as the mission progresses.

Others, however, expressed caution. Ethical artificial intelligence (AI) policy expert Preeti Syal said that in the long run more clarity may be needed to allocate the budget in the government’s final year.

“This is money that has been allocated, but unless it is spent towards the goals already listed within the stipulated time, the budget will be exhausted. This has happened before, which is probably why the government Has divided the mission in eight years.”

Syal said it remains to be seen whether the complexities of building infrastructure for quantum computing are fully understood by mission stakeholders and promoters in terms of capital allocation, industry participation and enabling access to resources for academia. goes or not.

To this, Prabhakar said that the Quantum-Enabled Science and Technology (QuEST) project of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), which was set up at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad in 2020, has laid the foundation for creating a Kept Skilled workforce in building quantum hardware in partnership with institutions. The budget of the project was allocated 80 crores.

“This is a great step forward for corporate firms indirectly, even if it does not directly benefit us. This is because when we talk to academics and government agencies on proof-of-concept (PoC) quantum application development, mostly At times, we fall behind due to the amount of funds available to run such research initiatives. It is not only the allocation of large funds to academic institutions, said Nikhil Malhotra, Global Head, Makers Lab, Tech Mahindra. can go, but also strengthen the R&D initiative of corporate arms.

The IT services firm currently runs a quantum applications research project under its Makers Lab, under an MoU signed with IQM Computers of Finland in December last year.

He added, “While it is too early to say, quantum application projects may see a surge with the inclusion of a national quantum mission, and the first monetizable deal for India’s service sector could come at the earliest by FY26.” Is.”

Research and industry applications on quantum computing are also increasing elsewhere. On 12 April, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) supported, Bengaluru-based Raman Research Institute signed a partnership agreement with the Indian Navy to create secure maritime communications using quantum technologies.

On March 6, IT services firm HCLTech announced a partnership with Microsoft, under which HCLTech’s quantum research and applications division, Q-Labs, will provide its customers with cloud-based quantum computing platform Azure Quantum. will offer quantum applications.

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